Beyond the Family Sea
by Slash McSlash
Summary: A series of short stories featuring Art, Felix, and everyone's favorite motley crew of wannabe pirates. Will include both het and slash, and spoilers up through the third book.
1. Nightmares of the Sweetest Kind

_Don't own a thing, except for my interpretation of Felix's angst after the events of the third book._

_I guess you couldn't call this a drabble. A one-shot, then? In any case, here I go. Warnings are, you know, blood and stuff (nothing you can't handle), and pairings (for **now**) are Art/Felix and Moira/Felix. Er, and maybe a smidgen of Goldie/Felix if you wanna look for it. I mean, it was_ _sorta canon..._

_So here is my first Piratica story, with hopefully more to come. Enjoy! _

* * *

**Nightmares of the Sweetest Kind **

Explosions ripped through the hull of the ship, though which ship exactly Felix was no longer sure. In this dance of vessels it became difficult to see where the _Unwelcome Stranger_ ended and the enemy ship began. Wood splintered and Felix threw himself to the deck so as not to be riddled by shrapnel. He heard cries and shouts and the stamping sounds of the actor-pirates running about, hastily fulfilling the demands of their Captain.

Where _was_ that fiendish devil of a woman, anyway?

He felt himself grabbed by the collar of his once-immaculate white shirt and thrown against the side of the cabin just as a piece of the rigging landed with a loud crash where he had been lying. And there she stood, her hair loosed from its tie and gleaming in the glow of the flames which leapt up from the deck of the other vessel. Everything about her essence seemed to blaze with inner fire, stunning and beautiful and fearsome all at once.

"What is it about staying below that is so repugnant to you, Mr. Phoenix?" she demanded, dropping to one knee and shoving him against the cabin wall to protect him from the crack of gun fire as they drew within pistol range of the enemy pirates. But the ships lurched away from each other, one hull bouncing off of the other, and she drew away to clasp him on the shoulders and frown at him. "Well? You usually have something contentious to say to my direct orders. You aren't hurt, are you?"

But Felix could not speak. His dark eyes stared into her pale as though entranced, drawing in the sight of her as though deprived of it for far too long. Hadn't he lost her once? What was to say it would not happen a second time?

An indescribable sound—a shot. From where Felix could not, at first, say. But Art slumped against him, her silver eyes wide with shock, like his. Her blood—red? Purple? Something in between?—pouring from the fatal chest wound, seeping into his shirt, splashing into his lap. There were no romantic last words passed between them. She slumped to the ground, sightless eyes staring up at the bloody sky.

Felix released a strangled yell, and clapped his hands over his mouth as if he might stifle the agony of his heart by stifling the sound of his cry. Not again. Not again.

And there stood a breathtaking demon, in her hand a flintlock pistol. Short black curls, clinging to her face (when had it begun to rain?), and brilliant green eyes. Little Goldie Girl, vengeance incarnate, daughter of his father's brother.

"What's the matter, Phoenix?" Goldie sang in that beguiling voice to her horrified cousin.

But Felix sobbed and sank down beside his dead wife. "You're dead!" He hollered at Goldie, clutching Art's lifeless hand. "I—I _saw it—"_

"You saw nothing," snarled Goldie, not quite so pretty when seething. She shoved him against the wall, her arm pressed against his throat, the whites of her eyes startling against her emerald irises and the black lashes framing them. There was mania in her stare. There always had been. "And even if you had, I would still live. In you, your mind, your _blood._ Your _child."_

"No!" he choked out.

Another explosion ensued, this time not of the earthly kind. The whole world shattered. The ocean tipped and they fell, all of them, every crewman and woman, into nothingness. Felix looked down—or was it up?—at the churn of green and silver that was the ocean beneath—above?—him, as he fell into the sky. A sky of morve.

He was crying, body shaking violently. He was being held tightly. He clutched back. A nightmare. It had been only a nightmare! Art was lying safe by his side, whole and healthy, embracing her husband.

"I dreamt you'd died," he choked out through his tears. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Crivvens, it must have been some terror to scare you thus, love," said a voice, not-Art's. He tensed up for a moment, before his recollection of the past three years crashed down upon him. He started crying again, harder this time. His dream had come true. Perhaps not exactly how he'd dreamt it—but he _had_ lost her, Art. Even if it had been by her choosing, those three years ago.

But Moira held him to her breast and stroked his hair, shushing his sobs patiently. She had no way of knowing which wife he had been dreaming of.

"I'm here," she murmured in her reassuring Scottish brogue when his tears had ceased their flow. "Go back t'sleep, my Felix. No more nightmares."

And yet, Felix wondered as he felt himself sink into sweet, dreamless oblivion, which was more heart-breaking, his dream or reality? In both Art had left him. But in the dream at least she had not done it willfully. In the dream he had not placed second to the ocean. In the dream she had loved him until the very moment she had died. Once he had thought—truly _believed_, poor, naive soul he was—that he had been freed from their union as he stepped for the first time onto Scottish soil. He should have known how untrue that was. He would never escape her. Half of his split soul went with her wherever she sailed off to; it always would.

Even if she had looked upon their babe with such scorn and detachment, even if she had stared at the child and swore she saw no similarity between mother and daughter...even if there _had_ been no resemblance, and by some cruel twist of fate the girl had somehow inherited her every feature from that accursed beauty, Goldie Girl...Felix could never gaze upon Afra without feeling memories of his Piratica stirring nostalgically in the back of his mind. It was like a betrayal of Moira and it twisted his soul, but he _loved_ Afra, sweet child.

And though he wished he didn't, he loved _her,_ too. And he somehow, somewhat craved these brief midnight interludes, horrifying as they were, if only to glimpse those eyes again. Eyes silver and dancing like a cutlass in the sun: those of Piratica. Forever the wife of his heart and the ghost of his nightmares.


	2. A Visitor from the Past

_Don't own a thing; I just like to borrow the characters so I can play with their tortured, angsty souls._

_No outright pairings in this one, but I guess what you could call traces of Moira/Felix and Art/Felix reside within. I hope to get to the boys soon._

_In any case, enjoy!_

* * *

**A Visitor from the Past  
**

When Afra answered the front door that evening onto the lovely moors of Scotland, the figure she saw before her was not the one she had been expecting.

A woman, perhaps in her thirties, yet still strong and spry-looking, stood on the walk in front of the house. Her arms were folded, and she was dressed for all intents and purposes like a somewhat well-to-do, seafaring young lad, with a loose-sleeved white shirt, collar open, a long embroidered red vest, breeches, black boots, and a three-cornered hat drawn slightly over one eye. She was dressed as a young man, yes, and at a distance would easily be mistaken for one—but from her own mother, Queen Moira, Afra had learned to recognize women in men's clothing.

Plus, when the stranger looked at Afra, her pale grey eyes were too beautiful and her long brown hair too soft and glossy in appearance to belong to a man. The only man Afra had ever known to be so beautiful was her father, and now the very thought of him saddened her deeply.

She knew she was staring, but curiously enough the stranger was staring back—as if _Afra_ were the one dressed in drag on the doorstep.

The astonishment on the stranger's face lasted only a moment, though. She smiled broadly, if a bit forcedly, and doffed her hat to Afra like the gentleman she was dressed to be.

"Hello," she said, in an English accent that was rich and smooth and confident as anything. "Miss Africa Phoenix, I presume? Though around here I've heard it pronounced _MacPhoenix,_ curiously enough."

"Aye," said Afra warily. "My father's name was Phoenix."

The stranger blinked, and her smile faltered.

"Did you say 'was'?"

"That's right." Afra traced one long finger along the doorframe and lowered her long black eyelashes mournfully. "He died last year. He got terribly ill…after the coup that took my mother, the Queen's, life."

She spoke of that terrible coup d'etat that had lost Scotland it's finest Queen and Afra her mother, as well as her father. After Moira had been assassinated and the new rulers had seized the throne, the newly widowed Felix Phoenix and the newly motherless Afra had been allowed to live, and had gone to stay with a shepherd's family that had been close to the wily Queen. But Felix, suffering from heartbreak and bad health, died soon after. The kindly shepherd had taken Afra in, at age thirteen, and there she had stayed ever since.

It suddenly occurred to her that an Englishwoman wouldn't necessarily know about the political goings-on of Scotland, especially an Englishwoman who was often away at sea, as this one looked to be. But if the stranger knew or did not know about the coup d'etat prior to the visit, it didn't really seem to matter. When Afra told her that Felix Phoenix was dead, the woman sagged a little, and stared at a low point on the doorframe with a dark, thin-lipped expression on her face. Her eyes looked miles away.

Afra shifted a little uncomfortably. "Did ye know him?" she asked.

The stranger looked up, as if startled back to the present. "Yes, I knew him. A long time ago." She shook her head. "It hardly matters now."

"I'm sorry I had to tell ye such horrible news," said Afra. She had been wary of this woman, but now she felt a bizarre connection. Perhaps it was because, for a moment, she had seen a flash of heartbreak in those pale grey eyes that matched the heartbreak Afra herself had felt at her parents' deaths…and still felt, even now...

"Ach, I have such dreadful manners," she said abruptly, searching for relief from the morbid conversation. "Won't ye come in? I'll whip something up for us to sup."

"No. I'll be on my way. Thank you for your time." The stranger did a little flourish with her hat and placed it back on her head. She half-turned to hop off the step, but then paused, and looked at Afra sidelong. "Your mother, the late Queen," she said slowly. "Was she good to you?"

"Aye. A greater Queen there never was. And a kinder, gentler soul I've never known." Afra thought about it a moment. "Save, perhaps, for me father."

The stranger nodded, and briefly looked Afra straight in the eyes.

"You're as lovely as he was."

Then she looked away, as if ashamed, hopped down from the step, and began to stroll away.

"Stars and summers light your way, Africa Phoenix," she said without looking back.

And then she was gone, into the darkness of night, before Afra could even ask who she was or how she knew her name.


End file.
